Well! but you will want to know the contents of the parcel that is set out.  It Contains another parcel, which contains I don’t know what; but Mr. Cumberland sent it, and desired I would transmit it to you.  There arc Ray’s Proverbs, in two volumes interleaved; a few seeds, mislaid when I sent the last; a very indifferent new tragedy, called “Barbarossa,"(533) now running; the author(534) unknown, but believed to be Garrick himself.  There is not one word of Barbarossa’s real story, but almost the individual history of Merope; not one new thought, and, which is the next material want, but one line of perfect nonsense;

“And rain down transports in the shape of sorrow.”

To complete it, the manners are so ill observed, that a Mahometan princess royal is at full liberty to visit her lover in Newgate, like the banker’s daughter in George Barnwell.  I have added four more “Worlds,"(535) the second of which will, I think, redeem my lord Chesterfield’s character with you for wit, except in the two stories, which are very flat:  I mean those of two misspelt letters.  In the last “World,"(536) besides the hand, you will find a story of your acquaintance:  BoncoEur means Norborne Berkeley, whose horse sinking up to his middle in Woburn park, he would not allow that it was any thing more than a little damp.  The last story of a highwayman happened almost literally to Mrs. Cavendish.

For news, I think I have none to tell you.  Mr. Pitt is gone to the Bath, and Mr. Fox to Newcastle House; and every body else into the country for the holidays.  When Lord Bath was told of the first determination of turning out Pitt, and letting Fox remain, he said it put him in mind of a story of the gunpowder plot.  The Lord Chamberlain was sent to examine the vaults under the Parliament-house, and, returning with his report, said he had found five-and-twenty barrels of gunpowder; that he had removed ten of them, and hoped the other fifteen would do no harm.  Was ever any thing so well and so just?

The Russian ambassador is to give a masquerade for the birth of the little great prince;(537) the King lends him Somerset House:  he wanted to borrow the palace over against me, and sent to ask it of the cardinal-nephew (538) who replied, “Not for half Russia.”

The new madness is Oratorys.  Macklin has set up one, under the title of The British Inquisition;(539) Foote another against him; and a third man has advertised another to-day.  I have not heard enough in their favour to tempt me to them, nor do I in the world know enough to compose another paragraph.  I am here quite alone; Mr. Chute is setting out for his Vine; but in a day or two I expect Mr. Williams,(540) George Selwyn, and Dick Edgecumbe.  You will allow that when I do admit any body within my cloister, I choose them well.  My present occupation is putting up my books; and thanks to arches and pinnacles, and pierced columns, I shall not appear scantily provided.  Adieu!